1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a driving support system which extracts and stores a determination item that causes a driver to suspect that a fault has occurred in a vehicle, from among predetermined determination items, in the case where a starting condition to be examined before starting driving support control is determined not to be established.
2. Related Art
Heretofore, a lane departure prevention (LDP) control system, a lane keeping steering assist (LKSA) control system, and the like are known as driving support control systems which perform steering (steering control, brake control, and the like) of a vehicle on the basis of information on the environment in front of the vehicle. For example, Japanese Patent No. 3332501 discloses a technique of the LDP control.
The lane departure prevention control system steers the vehicle so that the vehicle returns to a center part of a travelling lane when it is determined that the vehicle is likely to deviate from the travelling lane. The lane keeping steering assist control system sets a target travelling position in the travelling lane and steers the vehicle so that the vehicle travels forward the target travelling position. This steering control is activated by supplying a steering force to a steering mechanism by, for example, an actuator to turn the front wheels or by applying different braking forces to the right and left wheels so as to generate a yaw moment.
Even if the driver turns a control switch to an ON state to start support control, the system does not start the support control immediately. When a start condition is examined and found not to be established, the support control does not start, even if the control switch is turned to the ON state. There are some circumstances in which the support control does not start on account of bad weather conditions, road surface conditions, vehicle moving conditions, and the like.
If the support control does not start due to the bad weather conditions or the road surface conditions, the driver can easily recognize the conditions, and thus the readily understand the reason why the support control does not start (the start condition is not established). However, if the support control does not start due to a cause which is not recognized by the driver and if the cause persists, may suspect that any fault occurs.
In this case, the driver may bring the vehicle to an automobile dealer to examine the cause of the fault. However, even in the case where the start condition was not satisfied and thus the support control does not start, it is difficult to clarify the cause, if a history of events in which the start condition is not established why is detected. Although it is one way to store all of the past events in which the start condition is not established, work for finding the cause of the fault may become complicated.